Honesty and Pride Create Dramatic Title Races

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Steven Gerrard, right, consoling an emotional Luis Suárez after Liverpool gave up a 3-0 lead and tied Crystal Palace, 3-3. Liverpool lost its previous game, against Chelsea, and its hopes of a league title seem to be fading fast.CreditAdrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

LONDON — A little over a week from now, leaders from the world of sports and the betting industry will meet in Paris to hear the latest state of play in fraud and match-fixing.

We should rejoice, while we still may, of the intrinsic honesty we have just witnessed in the English and Spanish leagues. Between Saturday and Monday night, all the contenders for the titles in both countries were pushed to their limits by their opponents, most of whom had nothing to play for but professional pride.

That pride, that honesty, was thrilling to behold.

In Spain, Getafe, desperate for points to stay in La Liga, held Barcelona at the Camp Nou, 2-2. Levante, comfortable in the middle of the standings, beat the team chasing history at the top, Atlético Madrid, 2-0. And then Valencia traveled to the Bernabéu and came within minutes of a deserved victory before Cristiano Ronaldo back-heeled a match-saving goal in the final moments to make it 2-2.

So we still do not know who will be the Spanish champion.

Something similar is afoot in England. Last Saturday, Manchester City barely won at Everton, 3-2. Chelsea was held, 0-0, at home by a struggling Norwich City. And Liverpool, as different from Chelsea as chalk is from cheese, went three goals up at Crystal Palace on Monday before being caught on the rebound by three late goals as the game ended in a tie.

In that last quarter of an hour, which drove Steven Gerrard and Luis Suárez to tears, a season was encapsulated. Liverpool, rampant in attack until it blew out, has scored 99 goals this season. Palace has not even averaged a goal a game.

Yet Crystal Palace, a much smaller club in south London, has been the Houdini-like team of this and many a year. It, together with Sunderland, changed its manager early in the campaign and, without too much money to spend in the market, turned around its own fortunes by sheer graft, a never-say-die spirit and a refusal to be pushed around by supposedly superior opponents.

The Palace scorers on Monday — Damien Delaney and Dwight Gayle — are not even household names around London. Delaney is a 32-year-old Irishman, a journeyman defender throughout most of his career. Gayle has speed and potential, but he was a substitute sitting on the bench for the first hour of the game.

From there, he could see why Suárez and Daniel Sturridge are the top two strikers in the Premiership. Both had scored while Gayle watched. Both will be at the World Cup next month. And between them, the Uruguayan and the Englishman belonging to Liverpool have scored 52 goals, with Suárez alone striking the entire sum of Crystal Palace this season.

Liverpool’s defense is the Achilles’ heel that betrays its attack. Maybe you could say that it is in the team’s makeup because three other hard-pressed sides — Hull City, Swansea City and Cardiff City — had all also put three goals past the Reds’ goalie, Simon Mignolet.

It is in central defense where Liverpool failed — if it failed, because there is still nothing absolute about the league standing until the final line is crossed this coming Sunday.

Manchester City, however, fixed a similar vulnerability in its own defenses this season. City Coach Manuel Pellegrini had perplexed many experts when he went back to the Spanish league to sign Martín Demichelis, a long-haired and long-in-the-tooth Argentine that the coach had once employed at Málaga.

Demichelis arrived injured. He spent some time in the treatment room, and when he gave away a goal and was red-carded for fouling Lionel Messi in the Champions League, the studio critics mocked the defender’s lack of speed and mobility.

But Pellegrini knows his stuff. He wants his team to play from the back, to think creatively rather than hoof the ball out of defense. Demichelis does that better than any other partner City has fielded alongside its reliable captain Vincent Kompany, so the coach kept faith in his partnership.

Faith is a very good word to use about Tony Pulis. He was fired as the manager of Stoke City last summer, dismissed because his teams, while ever dependable, were also pragmatic. Palace turned to Pulis when it was in the mire after it went on a seven-game winless streak in the first half of the long English marathon.

Pulis turned it around to such an extent that there is a clamor to name him manager of the season. Maybe he should be; that title was earmarked for Brendan Rodgers for the way he lifted Liverpool, but now, in the fickle way these awards are handled, Rodgers will be deemed the nearly-man.

He couldn’t get defenders to put the brakes on once Suárez, Sturridge and Gerrard had done their thing. If City wins — or heaven help us if Chelsea’s negativity confounds everything on the final Sunday — one wonders if Liverpool will have missed its golden opportunity.

This was a season in which the Reds had everything in their favor. Arsenal, Chelsea, City and the faded Manchester United were all involved in the Champions League. Liverpool had one priority, which was to win its first English title in 24 years.

Its pursuit was magnificent as 11 straight wins were strung together. But then one slip, following a failure to control the ball in midfield by Gerrard, led to a Chelsea breakaway, and defeat, a week and a half ago. From there, City saw its opportunity and, despite injuries to key players, it was bold enough to go for victories at home and away.

Pellegrini is one of two adversaries who were insulted as losers by Mourinho. The other was Arsène Wenger.

Should City win the league, and Wenger’s Arsenal carry off the F.A. Cup this month, then Mourinho might have some explaining to do. But don’t hold your breath waiting for that.

Instead, watch the denouement of the English and Spanish leagues. And thank goodness for honest sports.